Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Toby Perkins

Wednesday 2nd March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse]

Once again, it is simply a matter of resources. Schools must be given extra resource to have specialists who guide young people into proper relationships. It will probably save us a lot of money if we get this right, but we need to spend the money in the first place.

To back this up, a 2021 Ofsted report highlighted just how early sexual harassment begins, to the point where it becomes “commonplace”. According to the report, 92% of girls said that sexist name calling happens a lot or sometimes; and 80% of girls—80%—reported being put under pressure to provide sexual images of themselves. These figures speak for themselves and say that we need urgent action.

It is hugely disappointing that the Government continue to rule out making misogyny a hate crime. Yes, we discussed this at the beginning of the week, but I need to repeat what I said just two days ago: we have to get to the root causes of violence against women and girls. We must send a powerful message that negative attitudes towards women that lead to hate and lead to offences—from harassment all the way to very serious sexual assault—are not acceptable, and that is what making misogyny a hate crime would do. Hate crime legislation, as we have established, does not add to an offence, but it has made a clear difference to crimes based on racial or religious hate. Why do women not deserve the same treatment? I still cannot understand why the Government are not supporting this. Making misogyny a hate crime is not a silver bullet, but existing hate crime legislation has made a clear difference. So let us get on with it and make misogyny a hate crime.

None of the steps that I have pointed to will make violence against women and girls stop overnight, but the time of inaction and making excuses is up—we owe it to all women and girls who suffer violence and harassment on a daily basis.2.48 pm

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I am really pleased that the Labour party has chosen to use one of our precious Opposition day debates for this subject today. It is a matter of tremendous importance. There is obviously a huge amount on the parliamentary agenda at the moment, so it really sends a positive sign that the party has chosen to debate this today.

I want to speak a bit about why this matters so much to me. As Members of Parliament, we on occasion have things that influence small numbers of our constituents—maybe just one of them. Sometimes it might be something that matters to a reasonable number of our constituents. If we had a factory closure that affected 5% of our constituents, we would be racing to Parliament to speak about it, but here we have an issue that not only affects the 51% of our population who are women, but demeans all of us who live in a society where our sisters, our partners, our wives and our daughters experience this and are not safe to go about their lives.

When I speak with those who I know intimately enough to have this kind of conversation, it is remarkable to me how absolutely everyday it is for women to face some kind of sexual harassment. Almost every woman I know who I am in a position to know this about has had an experience of something reasonably serious in this epidemic of violence. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) was right to say that we need to accept that we are talking about male violence against women and the extent to which it is culturally everyday and normalised.

This issue matters to me not just as a Member of Parliament representing all the women and girls in my constituency, but as a partner, a father, a brother and a friend of women who suffer from it. It also matters to me as a constituency Member of Parliament. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) spoke about how we all have constituency casework trying to support women who have been victims of rape and victims of sexual and domestic violence. We recently had the appalling murder of Gracie Spinks in my constituency. Because of the ongoing police investigation, I am not able to go into detail about that at the moment, but Gracie was murdered by a man who had been stalking her. She had no relationship with him previously, but he had become obsessed with her, and that case has touched the hearts of every person in Chesterfield and led to a very passionate debate in Westminster Hall a few weeks ago.

The Government’s approach is failing at every level. The number of offences committed is shocking enough. The number that do not get reported is shocking enough. The number of reported offences that get inadequately investigated is shocking. The number of cases that have been investigated that get submitted to the Crown Prosecution Service is shocking. The number of cases that get referred to the CPS, but that wait so long to get into court that the victim removes their support for the trial is appalling, as is the number convicted. At every level, this is an absolute crisis and an epidemic that the Government and we all collectively are failing to address.

It is regrettable that the Home Secretary is not responding to this debate, because it would have sent a powerful message if she had come and said, “I am fronting up here. I am taking this seriously. I am not going to delegate this to my junior Minister. I will be the one to respond to this debate.” I put that on the record.

One of the important things that came across very strongly in the debate that we had about stalking was that, when it comes to sexual and domestic violence and stalking, there is such a responsibility on the victim of crime to prove that an offence has taken place, in a way that does not happen if we report to the police that we have been attacked and beaten up or that something has been stolen. In those cases, it is accepted there is a likelihood that the offence has taken place. When it comes to these kinds of offences against women, there is a huge burden of proof on the woman to prove that something has taken place.

I want to talk particularly about the important issue of stalking. The motion does not talk about stalking, but the matter is incredibly important to us in Chesterfield in the light of the Gracie Spinks murder. We need police forces across the country consistently to provide stalking advocacy services for victims and to ensure that every police officer recognises what stalking is all about and the impacts of that offence. Importantly, we have been talking about online violence against women, but often if the police investigate the online case, they will get the evidence they need to back up the stalking case.

Alongside all the pressures that this motion places on the Government, there is a need for us collectively to have a candid conversation about the culture of male violence and the culture, particularly among younger men and older boys, of watching porn and in particular the kind of porn, readily available on the internet, that normalises vicious sexual violence against women. The Government have been too quiet on that, and it needs to be said.

The motion

“condemns the Government for failing to take sufficient action”.

I do not think that anyone who has listened to the statistics that have been put out today can have any doubt that insufficient action has been taken. I welcome the positive tone we heard from the Minister, but we all need to be relentlessly saying to the Minister and the Government that the time for talk is over. We need to see a collective approach that addresses the manifold failures we have here so that more of our sisters, wives and daughters can live more peacefully in the future.